Diva sounds very good. It's only weakness, as with all soft synths is that it doest have tactile controls. Perhaps Urs can do a kickstarter. If he can get enough buyers he can produce enough to supply the demand for a good price. Both synth project and U-he himself have built controllers. I think the u-he version would allow for more possibilities based on the fact that it has a screen. The only thing I would change would be that I would add LEDs to the knobs(little phatty style) and have a readout under the knobs(Like the bowen solaris).

Urs has very good ideas for MIDI control which (if he got around to implementing them) would likely serve as a "how to" for making virtual synths work better with hardware surfaces. If he did what he discussed a few years back then it would do more for software interfacing generic controllers than Diva did helping shift focus towards sonic quality.

The range/detune control implementation on Diva is bonkers though, since it essentially requires extra logic on a controller to track which values have been set (but I humbly apologize for originally suggesting cynical motives there Urs, if you see this )

Diva already has good thinking in terms of how the filter and envelope type automation is easily interchangeable. The oscillator layout is a bit sprawling and requires a large control surface to map well (and generic controllers rarely get as far as concepts like nested controller values to make those things easier.)

But the pop up menus are the real complicating factor for Diva. Even if you have a dedicated control surface, it's still the sort of thing which would benefit from a touch screen. You could do it with buttons to select various sources and destinations, but it'd be a bit tricky maybe.

I'm not sure about a dedicated controller for only one instrument (if I want a hardware paradigm I'll buy dedicated hardware). But I'd be interested in anything with a sufficient number of controls (think 32 knobs, 16 sliders and a bunch of buttons), improved on-board mapping logic, flexibility to be used for many applications, and which gave us more than crappy 7 bit resolution. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot between the cheap plastic controllers and gigantic expensive DAW control desks to cater to this, more synth minded, market niche.

PAK wrote:But the pop up menus are the real complicating factor for Diva. Even if you have a dedicated control surface, it's still the sort of thing which would benefit from a touch screen. You could do it with buttons to select various sources and destinations, but it'd be a bit tricky maybe.

Maybe ACE or Berlin Modular would be better candidates for this reason? Is it possible to map the old Korg Legacy Collection MS-20 controller to ACE.

PAK wrote:But the pop up menus are the real complicating factor for Diva. Even if you have a dedicated control surface, it's still the sort of thing which would benefit from a touch screen. You could do it with buttons to select various sources and destinations, but it'd be a bit tricky maybe.

Maybe ACE or Berlin Modular would be better candidates for this reason? Is it possible to map the old Korg Legacy Collection MS-20 controller to ACE.

Honestly, we're now 8 full time people at u-he and we're drowning in work. We can't even think of doing a hardware controller.

Back in the days we were thinking of building one a month ourselves - which would have been possible hadn't we run out of space in the office. We built our (heavily malfunctioning) prototype in the kitchen. The kitchen however has become our primary meeting place while dust and the smell of soldering doen't sit well with the food.

As for the split up tune control in Diva - it was the right move for mouse handling. As it also works with Automap and any MIDI setup, I still don't see the point of making two separate parameters out of it. The single parameter layout we have now lets one fully automate oscillator tune in the full range. With separated parameters that is not possible. The main obstacle IMHO is the tedious MIDI setup in our framework, which we are also working on (proper preferences pane)

As for the Faderfox controller, I'm not sure. Faderfox wanted some changes in ACE, and when we finally did them we never heard back. At that time everyone was pretty busy with Diva, so it took a few months, and maybe they had other things going then.

Urs wrote:Honestly, we're now 8 full time people at u-he and we're drowning in work. We can't even think of doing a hardware controller.

Back in the days we were thinking of building one a month ourselves - which would have been possible hadn't we run out of space in the office. We built our (heavily malfunctioning) prototype in the kitchen. The kitchen however has become our primary meeting place while dust and the smell of soldering doen't sit well with the food.

As for the split up tune control in Diva - it was the right move for mouse handling. As it also works with Automap and any MIDI setup, I still don't see the point of making two separate parameters out of it. The single parameter layout we have now lets one fully automate oscillator tune in the full range. With separated parameters that is not possible. The main obstacle IMHO is the tedious MIDI setup in our framework, which we are also working on (proper preferences pane)

As for the Faderfox controller, I'm not sure. Faderfox wanted some changes in ACE, and when we finally did them we never heard back. At that time everyone was pretty busy with Diva, so it took a few months, and maybe they had other things going then.

- Urs

Hey Urs, that's understandable. Hopefully things can happen sometime when you and your staff are less busy. It's only been recently that MIDI controller's have been catering to the professional and high quality markets(ie: Maschine , MPC renaissance). Software is catching up to hardware in terms of sound quality and has surpassed hardware in terms of flexibility. My biggest problem with VST's is lack of tactile and touch controls, I think we will see more software/hardware hybrids in the future. How many people would have to buy the controller to make building and manufacturing it worth your while - if it were to be built one day? Also I think a touch screen component would work well with a DIVA controller. My other question is did you finally add MIDI learn functionality to ace? I haven't used ACE yet but so it may already be updated. Here's what the guy at synthprojects who built the ACE controller had to say:

"The ACE Controller has a three octave keyboard with velocity and channel aftertouch. About 90 knobs, eight Sliders, six switches and joystick to control the most important parameters of the software.

"For the moment, the patch sockets have no function, because there is no MIDI learn function for these sockets. I placed them for the final look and maybe for later use. I hope Mr.Heckmann finds a way to add the MIDI learn function of the patch sockets."

Anyway I appreciate that you respond to questions and keep up with the great software

ChromeGhost wrote:Here's what the guy at synthprojects who built the ACE controller had to say:

"The ACE Controller has a three octave keyboard with velocity and channel aftertouch. About 90 knobs, eight Sliders, six switches and joystick to control the most important parameters of the software.

"For the moment, the patch sockets have no function, because there is no MIDI learn function for these sockets. I placed them for the final look and maybe for later use. I hope Mr.Heckmann finds a way to add the MIDI learn function of the patch sockets."

This is one area where Kore has the advantage, the patch cables do respond to VST automation and that is what Kore uses so in the template I made for ACE every cable is automated, I have assigned a knob to each cable so you can cycle through all possible permutations of that cable with that one knob. Also although it only has 8 knobs and 8 buttons you can have the whole layout broken down into subpages and unlike midi the resolution is much higher than 7 bit.

ChromeGhost wrote:Hey Urs, that's understandable. Hopefully things can happen sometime when you and your staff are less busy. It's only been recently that MIDI controller's have been catering to the professional and high quality markets(ie: Maschine , MPC renaissance). Software is catching up to hardware in terms of sound quality and has surpassed hardware in terms of flexibility. My biggest problem with VST's is lack of tactile and touch controls, I think we will see more software/hardware hybrids in the future. How many people would have to buy the controller to make building and manufacturing it worth your while - if it were to be built one day? Also I think a touch screen component would work well with a DIVA controller. My other question is did you finally add MIDI learn functionality to ace?